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Dec 20th, 2002 - Shall we dance? - Desi We came late to the party but it won't stop us from having fun. PoP as you all know has limited zones which have events which give further access. I will report progress along multiple storylines, skipping from one arc to another and hope you can follow along the mind boggling and complex plot. 4 Planes initially available, Plane of Justice, Innovation, Disease, Nightmare. Plane of Justice: Tier 1 Progressed through successfully to complete keys for Plane of Storms and Plane of Valor. About a dozen or so keys for 7th Hammer, but since he was buffed we don't feel he's worth the effort to key more people, especially since he doesn't progress the storyline.
Plane of Disease: Tier 1 Grummus went down, giving access to the Crypt of Decay. Grummus was a rather fun fight, with finding the elemental projection in the big fat corpse being the hardest challenge before it depopped on its 10 min timer. Killed him on repeat trips to get everyone keyed for the Ruins of Lxanvom.
Plane of Nightmare: Tier 1 The zone created out of the nightmare Thelin is experiencing. Very interesting concept and another well fleshed out storyline. Helped Thelin return the dagger to Terris Thule in the maze walk, where the vile demi-god of nightmares displayed her treachery. Keyed by this event, we charged forth into her lair to punish her. Lair of Terris-Thule: Tier 1 (Sub-zone) Terris Thule was one of the most fun fights in Planes of Power and indeed all of Everquest. Infact most of PoP has been a notch above in creativity, fun and storytelling experience than anything else in EQ. She was bested rather easily and allowed us access to Saryn's home.
Plane of Innovation: Tier 1 Xanamech, the mechanical dragons, was discovered and promptly defeated, and again, and again, and YET again, till we finally got a bug free gnome which gave us access to the factory in the other part of the zone. The factory was penetrated and the Manaetic Behemtoh was promptly dispatched (albiet after multiple attempts). I have to say this is the most lop-sided fight ever. To post a spoiler and say "kill it before it kills you" won't be too far from the truth. The fight is so short there is no possible way to unload/burn all mana if you were nuking even. Too bad our wizards refuse to reinvest in Manaburn. This got us flagged for Tactics.
Thanks for staying along for the ride. Sorry the progress report was less pictorial than I intended but I will remind myself to take more screenshots from now. Expect more updated news reports about the progress along all the different storylines and arcs as we continued to march towards the Lands of Phat Loots (aka Elemental Planes). So much to kill, so little time. Dec 12th, 2002 - Antonica's ass utterly kicked - Desi Gratz Wraith on being the only guild thus far on Quellious capable of beating Antonica. Every boss mob and zone has been downed by Wraith. Keep kicking ass guys, and PoP beware. This was accomplished by us finally beating Ring of Thule. I believe Reviviscence still needs to kill Lady Vox. OMG Congrats Wraith. P.S. If you don't get it, don't ask. Dec 12th, 2002 - VT is the Devil - Growls Lots of kills since last update, of note are: Emp x2, Cursed(grats Revenger on bloodfrenzy), HP(grats Citto on BB), Terris Thule x2, Grummus x2, HoH trials even tho Rydda'Dar seams to avoid us, Doomshade(wtf??), Aerin'Dar x2. Finally completed the buggy Save the Gnome quest in PoI and tried Behemoth(note thats Behemoth the big ass ugly mofo in Poi, not to be confused with Behemoth the big ass ugly mofo in Wraith). Also have been doing alot of key farming for Bastion of Thunder, and getting some exp. Cleared VT again, our fastest and cleanest yet, grats me on a whopping negetive 57 or so points /sigh. Grats Biffins on Wristband of Judgement, Vortok on uber neck and Nemekis on V10 arms. Nov 18th, 2002 - Some PoP and more VT - Desi Got everyone rushed through the Plane of Justice trials as fast as possible and finally happened to find one glass dragon up in a chamber in Plane of Valor, so down he went giving us access to Halls of Honor. Aerin'Dar was a fun fight, more Kunark (VP in particular) then Velious or Luclin and I like the change. Still haven't found Grummus, Terris or Behemoth up ...... damn that server competition! More PoP news as it happens. In other news we cleared Vex Thal over the weekend again and picked up our first Aten Ha Ra robe for Nanelen. Ciao. Nov 10th, 2002 - Aten Ha Ra dead - Desi I'd hate to be overdramatic but the win was so sweet which such a emphatic conclusion to months of keys and shard farmings that it's hard not feel so satisfied. All those days/night of emp key camps, the long waits for Emperor attempts, the shards camps etc all came together in a rousing crescendo. In a exciting 6 hour romp we ran from Thall Va Kelun to Aten Ha Ra exploring and learning all the content in between for the first time. None of the named or clearing mobs etc posed any issues with our 40-45ish member raid force, which only enhanced the feeling that VT was a reward zone for all the months of effort. Nothing in VT is close to the difficulty of the many more tougher mobs outside it, just tedious. The place doesn't need to have half as many mobs to clear as it does, but it wasn't an issue at all. We went from zone-in to TVK in 1 day and from TVK to AHR in another day, and two days seemed fair to me for the rewards. I know other guilds manage to romp through the zone in single 7-10 hour sessions and hopefully we'll manage to achieve that level of proficiency as well on repeat clearings. The zone is beautiful, the clearings were fun and we all thoroughly enjoyed learning and clearing it. Thall Va Kelun and Diabo Xi Va Temarial were next to go down after the Diabos on first floor. Both look like the same old 4-armers, and they look the same dead. First run on Thall Va Kelun posed some problems as it was late night and our 6 grp raid couldn't handle the repops on the longish fight. Second try we had better time management to cap off the first day with the kill. The second day of clearing took us to DXVT through the much discussed "Hall of Doom" although I didn't understand the big deal. DXVT also went down easily and the clearings became a lot less tedious after that as named lined up one after the other, ready to die.
VXAHR was first new model we saw for a while, which itself was cause to cheer. Got trained by mistakes but still died easily as we learnt the mob during the fight. Next up were two versions of these identical goos.
The buggy Gravty-fluxes managed to warp the entire wing below us onto us, but in probably the most challenging and exciting fight of the whole trip we again managed to avoid a CR and cleared all of them. And then nothing remained but Aten Ha Ra herself, and she followed the course of her comrades to eternal rest...... well, till repop.
Yeah we picked up some nice trinkets and ancient spells along the way but I doubt anyone who comes to read this update cares for the list. Needless to say they were nice enough to warrant repeat trips. Planes of Power, hmmmm time to find out what the hoopla is about. Ciao. Nov 6th, 2002 - More VexThal - Desi Frequent server outages have forced frustrating restarts on our Vex Thal clearing. I wanted to post pics of trains and disasters and corpses littered all over the screen due to wipeouts and I will, soon as we have one. Pull team's been a gem and the zone is very enjoyable so far. Granted the more annoying features like AE blind have been removed, making the zone easier and more enjoyable for recent entrants like us, and I'm glad. Managed to take down the three Diabos.
They all have identical rooms, same model and died in the same spot, in the same position and with equal ease, so why take up more bandwidth than one pic. So far all mobs seem to be rewards for all the months of key/bane farmings for emperor and shard camps for VT keys. None of the mobs so far are harder than Vindi/Rumblecrush difficulty level, all mobs encountered so far died easily on first go with no prior info. Picked up some nice trinkets from them, but don't worry, I won't barrage you with a list of loots and names. Emperor also died again, for the first time since PoP and WOW! With the new hp buffs, lev 65 tanks, and above all the 40% disease slow available, the mob is a complete joke to its previous difficulty level. Atleast he's more accessible by smaller guilds now too, which means less farming for them and makes you wonder why you bothered. Right now Emperor is most definitely doable with 35-40 ish. Still no news on Planes of Power here. Don't have the time yet. First things first. Later. Oct 31st, 2002 - VexThal - Desi Planes of Power is here, and we have nothing to do with it. Need to finish up some old stuff before we tackle this new beast. Killed Emperor twice more, this time without mod rods. This is after the patch in which the gimped version was fixed. The fight lengths were exactly 26 min and 27 min for the 2 fights and seems his hitpoints have been restored to what they originally were. Wasn't much of a problem and we managed to find several ways around the god rods. Dropped a 2-hander and two 1-hander swords, another torque, a cloak, a horse and 2 more Garrison nukes for Mystianna and Oriz. We're 3/3 on the nukes now, woot! Finally managed to enough people with shards (40 or so) to decide it's enough to try out Vex Thal. I have to say the zone is fun and active. We've yet to have any trains (well, none we couldn't handle) and I'm thankful that the coffin crs we were warned about on first trips have eluded us. We've been cautious though, as we were trying to learn the mobs, their classes/levels/abilities/repop timers and etc. First mob up was Thall Va Xakra after a little clearing. Rumblecrush difficulty level. No I'm not joking. Also took out Thall Va Xakra #2. Loots were very good for the difficulty. 2 gorgets, boots and symbol.
Cleared to Kaas Thox Xi Ans Dyk or whatever. No pics of this one, I'll get one next time. Just imagine the goo from the sewers in Cazic Thule dungeon, only colored black. Another trivial fight. So far it seems everything is easily manageable with 6 groups or even less. Ofcourse most of the zone to go still and more challenging mobs around the corner. This guy dropped an amulet and earring. More to come from Vex Thal in the days ahead. Oct 19th, 2002 - Nice toy, and the death of the God Rod - Desi Picked up this gem recently from Ring of Thule, obviously the only one on the server.
Arguably the most valuable droppable item in the game. Incase you were wondering, yes the is indeed 41% as can be verified here. Congrats Dupri. In other news, the dreaded death of God Rod is in and we've only done a handful of uber mobs since. The Cursed cycle we took down happened to be the gimped version. High Priest's AC/hitpoints were majorly nerfed, very disappointing and unnecessary as all clerics were above 80 mana when he died. Same with Arch Lich, closer to 50% this time, but another unnecessary nerf on AC/hps. We never used rods on Itraer Vius and Shei anyway so those fights were unchanged. The upcoming Emperor fight will be a lot more interesting as it's supposed to provide more challenging mana management issues. Plane of Power patch goes in on Monday. Given my experience with the release of the Kunark, Velious, Luclin expansions, I'd advise everyone to gear up for daily patches for the next week or two. See you in the Plane of Knowledge as we all sit around and curse Verant when we realize 70% of the content is locked, each plane requires a laborious key process and you can't put points in Planar AA abilites without your class title. Don't be surprised if it's as big a grind as Luclin. You heard it here first. Ciao. Oct 15th, 2002 - O Ye of little faith...... BEHOLD! - Desi
Need I say more ? No........ but I will anyway. Emperor Ssraeshza is dead. And not just dead, he was comprehensively beaten in a manner we didn't dare hope for. MT died only once (coincidentally at about the 50% mark) and the next one didn't die in a totally clean fight. 27 minutes of pure adrenaline rush. The kind of emphatic win that makes you wonder why it didn't happen earlier. Grats Hayzel on shawl, Ittee on slippers, Lunara on torque and Desaran on Garrison nuke. Fiercely proud of our accomplishments, and having beaten arguably the two hardest encounters in the game (RoV and Emp), it's time to remove the artificial restrictions we had to cope with, regarding access to the mobs because we came to the scene late. Emperor should have been dead months ago but our 6 attempts were spread 2 months apart. Time to change all that in PoP. It's all even now. Cheers Wraith and Reviviscence! Cheers indeed!! Oct 4th, 2002 - Frustrating ....... - Desi Emperor attempt 4. Everything started wrong. We tried a new strategy which back-fired. Emperor jumped in camp and a bunch of clerics, shamans, mages and other classes bit it before the fight even started. From there how we managed to make even this progress is a testament to the skills of the wonderful folks I choose to play with. We never managed to fully recover from the initial mess and I hope to bring better news next time we go at him .......... which frustratingly won't happen for a week.
In other more cheerful news, we've managed to lay into RoV well and good. Sometimes one wonders whether the RvR is worth the 4 hour raid until you pick up one of these gems.
Congrats Lunara on your new robe; don't see many (any?) clerics with these on Quellious. Also picked up Master of Death spell for Nirhtam, Feral Avatar for Lotanz and other goodies from here and many other farming mobs. Another week to wait....... oh well. Sep 28th, 2002 - Good news, bad news - Desi Emperor attempt 3. The bad news is too much stuff went wrong with the fight. The clincher being that a add woke up as one of the four enchanters we had for the fight lagged out. No excuses. It is a unforgiving fight in some respects. We'll get some backup enchanters for next time. The good news is we know how to fix it. Ah, if only we could try him everyday. Till next time, ciao.
Sep 26th, 2002 - Another RoV - Desi Since there's not much new to report I thought I might as well comment on another successful Vulak beating last night. The significant thing was that it was by far our smoothest outing. This encounter still is a wild-ride. Sometimes a bit too intense for 3 and half hours of non stop action. Still our only source of Ancient spells and we'll take it. Loot consisted of Bracer, Pauldrons, Ring, Jaelen's Katana and Wizard and Necro nukes for Desaran and Vilenn respectively. Sep 25th, 2002 - Oh the boredem! - Desi Nothing new to report from never-never-land. Summer's ended, and had a slight hit in attendance. Didn't affect much except force us to abort our attempt on Emperor. 2 attempts so far only and we were well-schooled in both of them. And since you dont see his face plastered here in a 'horizontal' position, he's not dead yet. And the thought of camping more stuff for the next challenge (Seru weapons, Acrylia keys, VT components) is enough to make one sick. PoP can't come fast enough. We've been doing more than our fair share of farming though, as one would expect. Same old ssra bosses minus Emp, AoW, Burrower, RoV, Shei etc. I would have even had a chance to put a "Flawless Victory" headline for our recent AoW kill had the puller not inexplicably died on pull, but we still managed to 1-tank him for the first time for us. People used to say switching MTs was the hardest part for AoW. Well, he's a total bore now. Ciao and laters. Sep 12th, 2002 - Oh the drama! - Desi For the most part Quellious can be qualified as one of the most civil servers at the top end. All the top guilds are in contact with each, discussions are held in advance to pre-empt spawn disputes and hardly anyone races another. In this 'Pleasantville' equivalent of EQ servers we now have a spoiled brat. A new guild, Expoofit, has arrived to the scene. It's a up-and-coming guild, with a propensity for Velious kings, and Luclin minors. They also like to poof AoW and Shei every chance they get, hence the name. Unfortunately they haven't been blessed with the maturity to handle spawn disputes. Case in point, one late night Wraith/Reviv arrive in Kael to kill King Tormax. Rel in Por starts moving in as well and I talked to their guild leader. Apparently they had been camping him all day and had moved out of Kael 15 or so minutes before he popped. We decided to be courteous even though we were at the spawn first and let them go ahead. So as RiP is gearing up, we headed to Arena to kill Vindicator and to wait to see if RiP would take down Tormax. Lo and behold, Expoofit decides to give up on Seru keys for the night (thank god he can't be poofed) and comes to Kael even though there are TWO guilds already in the zone for the spawn. At this point, brought together by a common enemy, Wraith/Reviv and RiP teamed up to pull Tormax through all of the Expoofit trains and kill him TWICE as a treacherous bard who will hereby go unnamed (aka Linaren of Expoofit) casted bard gate song on King Tormax when he was 10% hp. It was a lot of fun actually and one can only hope that the up-and-coming guild Expoofit also picks up some manners along with better skills in their evovling process. On the less dramatic side, we took down RoV again and picked up some loot along with Mage and Druid nukes for Kindir and Aguilera. Also farmed all other mobs you'll expect us to farm, all Ssra except Emp, AoW etc etc. But we also gave some shots to some new encounters. Here's the key to RoV fights, mages in unbearably bright lime green robes.
Finally we tried Emperor Ssraeshza. You don't see a ss of the dead corpse, hence it didnt go so well. With the current rotation we have in place with the guild currently farming him, we only get 1 shot per week on the spawn pretty much, excluding patches, and we hope to bring him down within the next few tries. I'll keep you guys posted if we do any significant damage to him. Also, in one of the most fun encounters we have ever participated, we also tried the Ring of Thule, the source of the best droppable loot in the game... almost; since all items in the new CT are droppable. We had an unbelievable time through RoT. Here's an action shot.
We actually progrssed pretty far in the fight and managed to kill Dread and Fright and almost killed Terror. I hope to soon bring you guys screenshots of another encounter completed. Here's the loot we picked up from Dread and Fright respectively, new to the server ofcourse. The loot is as expected, sub par for the difficulty of the encounter, but the fun factor of the fight made up for it.
Also took down the new THO given the new resist rates and dot stacking. I must say that this is a most annoying fight now. One of the worst RvR out there and not worth the time anymore. Take your usual 3-4 grps for the fight and you'll have some fun. Although we were lucky to get unusually good loot (2 wiz nukes, orb and dagger), the loot table most certainly is not changed. Aug 29th, 2002 - Ring of Fire dominated - Desi Tying up more loose ends. Went back to the Ring of Fire and completely dominated it. We are now extremely comfortably able to keep the Ring going indefinitely. We cycled through all of the named as they kept popping including the Underking's first slaying on Quellious. He was kind enough to drop this orb for Enkor.
Eventually after 2-3 hours of farming we stopped the Ring but since it's always up I'm sure we'll be back when there's not much up elsewhere and we want some nice loots. Ciao. Aug 27th, 2002 - Ring of Vulak'Aerr Defeated - Desi Without being able to find Emperor up at all (still need to have a go at him) we decided to take care of some unfinished business elsewhere. On our 4th attempt after about 3 hrs we were greeted by the boss of the Temple of Veeshan and Vulak'Aerr graced Quellious with his presence after about 8 months as this was incidentally the first time the Ring of Vulak was defeated on Quellious.
For the curious minded, the rewards consisted of Palladius' Axe of Slaughter, Viik's Pauldron's of Pain, Crystasia's Crystal Ring, Valtron's Necklace of Wonder, Ancient Starfire of Ro for Enkor, Ancient Concussion for Mystianna and a lot of pride and joy. Cheers Wraith / Revivscence on our finest achievement to date. May this herald even better times ahead. Aug 21st, 2002 - Yet more farming - Desi Don't have anything significant to report. Quellious has had more outages and we've been incredibly busy mopping everything up. Cleaned out all mobs in Ssra except Blood / Emp in the last patch and were busy this patch too. Been getting good drops of late including our third trinket from Creator. Cursed had his usual sweet bounty. Shei is incredibly generous to us and gave up more shoulders and 2 more pair of these incredible legs in our smooth run yesterday. Among new encounters we've been learning to take care of the guards in Emp room on non-loot Blood. Still not ready for a Emp attempt but our first go should happen within a fortnight. Killed some named in the Ring of Fire (Warlord, Warmaster etc) but the Underking eluded us. Will revenge him soon. Must get Ice Comet proccing skull !!!! =) Gave the Ring of Vulak a whirl. Got trampled on by the wave of splitter drakes. Been too busy finishing keys for Emperor to focus on these other encounters much but soon enough. Ciao. Aug 4th, 2002 - Yawn, farming - Desi More and more server outages on Quellious resulted in days of busy farming. Cursed again, nice drops, and recently on a typical day we put down Yelinak, Tormax, AoW, HP, THO, Burrower, Dain in that order. Nothing new to repot. Ciao. July 30th, 2002 - More firsts for us and more farming - Desi Vyzh'dra the Cursed died on the second attempt. The gimp mobs Glyped and Exiled went down on first go. One more snake to go in Ssra. We all know what it is. The key farming is in full swing. Hopefully by the end of next month we'd making serious runs at him.
Also took some revenge on the Burrower encounter. I know it's a easy fight but it's been a long time coming for us mostly due to availability. As if to make things equitable, we were rewarded with TWO robes on the first kill !!! YEAY !! Also got some sweet loot from High Priest (Bloodbath and Shield) and Creator (Trinket etc). And various other farming mobs.
Had a 1 day clearing of N ToV as well since it's so rare to find all 14 mobs up at the same time. We've moved to a new server, which is why it took so long to update this time. Expect more frequent updates going forward. July 3rd, 2002 - Four out of Four on the Eve of the Fourth! - Desi Another exhilarating encounter. Another mob we had never faced before and another mob that went down on first try !!! WOOT. Cheers Wraith / Reviviscence !! Need I say more..................... a picture is worth a thousand words.
Classic perfect first encounter. Figured out where he was in the zone. Got to him. Got hit by traps two doors before (now we know), cleared to his room, saw the guards in the room, killed them, timed repop, checked debuffs on them, checked mezzes on them, checked mob melee, checked mob debuffs, mapped strategy for the encounter, VOILA !! Snake ala High Priest for your July 4th BBQ. Yummeeee. And clean fight too. Yes it's just another step. Yes we have more goals. But the last 4 days added up (4 attempts, 4 dead mobs, 3 of which we had never attempted before and had little to no knowledge of) have created a euphoria that reminds us all over again why we play this game. Cheers Wraith / Reviviscence !! 4 months ago we were farming Kael quest armor and had finally managed to take down Kland/Zlan and now we've almost killed every mob killed on the server. You be the judge. Here's the goodies we picked up from him.
July 2nd, 2002 - Hatrick! - Desi Cheers Wraith / Reviviscence for three awesome days, with the third new kill for us. Started with some more farming in Ssra and then word came that Shei Vinitras was up in Akheva Ruins. We've never had the pleasure of attempting this fellow before.
First try and dead. If you know this encounter you'll know that if you lose a bunch of folks to him during the fight, you get lev 60 adds to deal with. Hence any winning encounter has to be relatively clean, but I must admit for a first attempt we surpassed our own expectations. The fight was clean, under control and remarkably easy, from start to finish. All the hype about this encounter's difficulty are exaggerations at best, and pure lies to keep others away at worst. Now the reason we went for this encounter was simple, we hadn't killed him before. But the reward we got was astonishing and made it all the more worth it.
Hehhee. If we are going to be treated to more of these goodies you can bet we'll be back for more. Take care and make sure you don't miss the fireworks. Later. July 1st, 2002 - Extended Welcome to the Temple of Ssraeshza - Desi Arrived back in Ssra the day after killing Arch Lich to find that the basement was up but we were already beaten to it. Oh well. We have yet to trigger (let alone attempt) the Glyphed cycle due to availability. I guess we'll be forced to wait another week for that chance. But we did find that the Creator had spawned.
After the Arch Lich this fight was a complete joke, even though we got the dual weilding version. With little prior info the mob went down on first try. Everyone involved had more good time. People are pumped for more Ssra action, and we are taking action to satiate them. Stay tuned for more Ssra adventures and ciao. | ||||||||
